On 12/30/10 3:33 PM, Platonides wrote:
But you're
right; they can't be everywhere, so maybe there should be a
guidelines page on design principles. We have WP:CIVILITY, do we have
similar guidelines for software developers, on how to make it easy for
the community to be civil?
I'm lost here. Are you calling uncivil the developer community for this
thread? You mean that WP:CIVILITY should be enforced by mediawiki?
Developers should be more helopful when dealing bug reports? What do you
mean?
I guess I have not been clear... I was picking up on what Tim said, that
we have to work on making WP and other projects into places where people
feel more welcome.
Telling people to be nicer may help, but I actually think that people
are more shaped by their environment. If you go from a party at a
friend's warm apartment to an anonymous street your mood and
receptiveness to others changes instantly.
The point is to make MediaWiki more like the friend's apartment, and
less like the anonymous street. If we have interfaces that make it easy
for admins to be rude to new editors, they will be more rude. If we make
it easy to be nice, then maybe they'll also be nicer. This isn't a
radical new idea.
Tim already noted that he hopes Pending Changes (nee FlaggedRevs) would
help people be less brusque with one another. Polite template responses,
things like that.
Users are influenced by very subtle cues. Understanding how they work is
a very rare ability. So I was suggesting we collect rules of thumb for
people who are making interfaces. Not policies to bash each other with.
--
Neil Kandalgaonkar ( <neilk(a)wikimedia.org>